Mark Twain and the Heaven Without Cigars

“If there are no cigars in heaven, I shall not go.” Hardly a sentence is more frequently cited when cigar lovers reassure themselves of their passion — and hardly one stands on shakier ground. The researchers of the Quote Investigator project have followed the trail and found no evidence in Mark Twain’s works, letters or reliably attested statements. All that is confirmed is a related passage in his notebooks — it concerns, however, swearing in heaven, not smoking. For the positive variant — roughly: “If there is smoking in heaven, that is where I want to go” — there is at least a family recollection from 1929 that Quote Investigator has documented; as a verified Twain quotation it nonetheless does not stand.

That the world believes the line regardless is due to its author. Twain was a monumental smoker: by his own account he began as a child and at times got through three hundred cigars a month — though with him, exaggeration was a craft, and such figures reveal more about his wit than his bookkeeping. They are tradition from his own mouth, not a verified statistic.

Reliably attested, by contrast, is his fondness for cheap, strong cigars. In his essay “Concerning Tobacco” Twain mocked the label-worship of fine society: hardly anyone could identify a cigar by the taste of its brand — people simply believed what was written on the box. Expensive Habanos he left to one side and cheerfully told of guests who capitulated before his beloved cheap brands the moment they knew what they were smoking.

Perhaps it is therefore fitting: a man who regarded the truth as perpetually improvable receives posthumously sentences he never said. They simply suit him too well.